Intelligent, combat-skilled, and able to manipulate the net as well as an AI while embodying the natural unpredictability of humans, she would have made a powerful agent for Adam’s cause. With the founders of the Institute investigating the murders, he needed a distraction.
Unfortunately, the same qualities that made her a wonderful weapon also created a potent threat. Given her rapid advancement, he weighed probabilities and reluctantly decided the risks outweighed the potential benefits.
What to do with Cat?
Releasing her was out of question, and she’d escape from mere imprisonment. Death eliminated future risk, yet he hesitated to take irreversible action. He might wipe her conscious mind and use her body as a remote, but her unique abilities wouldn’t survive the process.
One path minimized danger and kept her available for the future: a medically induced coma. With higher brain function halted she’d pose no risk, and he had the option to resuscitate her if needed.
Adam’s thoughts derailed as an alarm he’d never before seen signaled. Cross-referencing the input, he found the Continental made an unplanned stop due to a track obstacle directly under the Tucson emergency egress. He checked historical data; in seven years of operation this had occurred only once before.
He forked an instance to take care of the girl, allowing his master context to focus on the train. He instructed the digital clone to operate two medical robots and a dozen combat bots to bring her to the hospital.
The likelihood of an emergency occurring in the same week of his planned assassinations was less than one percent. Ergo, this was almost certainly an attack on him.
He tunneled through the firewall to the outside world, wormed through routers, and hacked into the passenger manifests. Seven hundred and thirty passengers on the Continental, including thirty-eight without implants or identification, but none of the identified an apparent cause for concern.
He’d decided to put Catherine Matthews in a coma because of the potential danger. Now he thought that the train making an emergency stop was also threatening. They appeared to be logical conclusions, but he couldn’t rule out the effect of his own machine dementia: he could be seeing threats were there were none. He ran a quick analysis of his neural nets, finding a two percent degradation since his last check. There was nothing to do now except see his plans through before the disease worsened to the point of total dysfunction.
Whether the train stop was an attack or not, he needed to treat it as one to reduce risk. It was an unlikely vector for a government agency or the military to take, since they’d most likely strike in force if they discovered his plot rather than concoct a deception with the train. But it could be Leon Tsarev and Mike Williams, operating on their own since he’d shut down the Institute and killed Shizoko.
He needed to be cautious. Wantonly killing the train’s passengers would be hard to disguise if it turned out to be a legitimate emergency, yet he couldn’t allow Leon and Mike to expose him so close to the culmination of his plans.
Adam checked the bot inventory at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, selecting eight of the least threatening combat bots, humanoid units intended for light guard duty. He deployed the combat team, then waited five minutes and dispatched civilian emergency services.
50
Cat walked down to the hotel lobby, smiling at the ever-present receptionist, who ignored Cat, simply staring off into the distance.
She crossed the tiled foyer, shrugging off the unsettling interaction, and entered the Cup Cafe, disappointed to find the little restaurant empty. Adam had sent up meals yesterday, but tired of being kept in her room, she wanted out. She’d spoofed the local net nodes carefully so she appeared to be in bed.
A blonde came to take her order. Alarm in her eyes, she mumbled a greeting and waited for Cat to speak.
“Can I have the huevos rancheros and coffee?”
Without a word, the girl nodded and scurried to the kitchen.
“And a Herradura Aneja, neat,” Cat called after her.
She wanted something for the lingering soreness in her neck and back. Her mom wouldn’t approve of tequila for breakfast, but she figured being squirreled away by a paranoid, dysfunctional AI counted as an extenuating circumstance. Qigong would probably be better, but after yesterday’s training she feared that practicing might accidentally trigger a change in cyberspace.
The waitress poured tequila and coffee behind the bar and brought them back.
“Wait, don’t go,” Cat said as the girl turned once more to rush away. She looked at her long hair, waifish form, the fear behind her brown eyes. “Don’t you talk?”
She shook her head and left.
Cat scanned, but the waitress had no implant.
She rubbed her face, trying to figure out what was going on. She didn’t trust this city, didn’t like the way the net tasted in her mind, how it reminded her of the cloying stench of a long abandoned refrigerator. And the people! Scared, blank-faced, or simply absent.
Most of all, she did not like Adam, her neck tightening at the mere thought of him. He was an effective teacher, but no true sensei would have done what he did yesterday — to cut off their sparring when he did. It was almost as if … he was afraid.
After a lengthy absence the waitress reappeared with her food, apparently the chef as well as wait staff and bartender, then returned to the bar and resumed looking out the window.
Cat ate, barely tasting a thing, until she’d cleared half her plate. In a smooth motion, she stood and walked toward the swinging door.
The waitress squeaked and moved to block the entrance, but Cat was already through. The spotless kitchen was empty, not a lick of food visible. Cat glanced left and right, then flung open the door of the industrial refrigerator, finding a single carton of eggs, milk, a little meat and veggies. Nowhere near what should be present in a restaurant. She stalked out of the kitchen, startling the waitress again.
She ate her last few bites standing up, then swallowed the coffee. One thing she’d learned in her new life was not to waste food or drink.
Cat walked upstairs, found the staircase to the roof and threw wide the maintenance door, getting blasted by the heat and blinded by the sun. At not quite noon, the temperature was past ninety. When her eyes adjusted, she crossed to the eastern edge. From this third floor vantage she saw over nearby structures, toward the center of town and the tall buildings of the University of Arizona.
She performed the flower meditation, weaving a defensive shield of white roses to protect against detection from Adam. If the petals grew dark, she would blow them west. She kept up the meditation while she carrying out a derivative of Soaring Crane. Soon the network topology appeared. She sorted through the net, working methodically and disguising her requests among the background data. She steered clear of the menacing firewall that loomed dark around the city.
Cat scanned through the people, careful not to ping or disconnect anyone, actions visible to Adam. Instead she searched local net nodes for the list of who had connected in the last twenty-four hours.
She accumulated logs and cross-referenced IDs to eliminate duplicates. When she was done, the numbers didn’t make sense. Less than ten thousand people and only a thousand AI.
Tucson should have half a million humans, and if it was anything like the rest of the country, one AI for every ten people.
Sure, lots of old folks who came to Tucson to retire wouldn’t have implants, nor would little kids. People living on the economic fringe couldn’t afford them. Still, between University students and mainstream adults, there should be at least a quarter million people on the net.